This invention relates broadly to railway car rolling stock, and in particular relates to railway car trucks which are equipped to be radially self-steering.
Railway trucks that are radially self-steering have proven to considerably reduce the lateral force on the rail in curves and to greatly improve the stability of the lateral action in high speed tangent track operation. In one form of self-steering railroad truck, steering arms are connected to a member forming one element of the bearing assembly provided towards each end of an axle of the wheelset. Generally speaking, the steering arms have heretofore been attached to the bearing adapters of the bearing assembly.
Adapters are generally manufactured via a casting process requiring a significant amount of machining preparatory to connecting a steering arm to the adapter. For example, an end of the adapters must be machined for providing a suitable surface for interfacing with the steering arms which have been similarly machined. Heretofore, two relatively high strength bolts have been used to secure the adapters to the steering arms. The use of such bolts has required drilling and tapping of both the steering arms and adapters. The foregoing are relatively expensive operations as they require relatively large fixtures to accommodate the hardware in order to maintain the required accuracy of the resulting assembly. The drilling and tapping processes are subject to close tolerances thereby further increasing the cost of assembly. Further, the bolts must be torqued extremely tight to insure the integrity of the connection between the adapter member and the steering arm. The stress induced in the bolts due to such torquing dictates that the bolts be of a high quality without flaws to avoid material fatigue during operation of the truck. Such bolts are inordinately expensive and do not assure against failure.